Leather Pants: A Story That Resembles An Essay
by Sherlockelly
Summary: What exactly was *up* with Faith and Buffy!? I attempt to hack into Joss Whedon’s (Josh Weiden’s) brain and explain the nastly little subtext that existed there. F/B *SLASH* (That outta get your attention.) ::winks::


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Title: Leather Pants: A Story That Resembles An Essay

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Summary: What exactly was _up_ with Faith and Buffy? I attempt to hack into Joss Whedon's (Josh Weiden's) brain and explain the nastly little subtext that existed there. F/B *SLASH* (That outta get your attention)

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Disclaimer: I'm stupid and there is no way I could be Joss so I don't try. These are his people his brain, and I'm just a mass tool. End of Story. By the by, some of my quotes are off so don't get all pissy. I'm quite aware that I'm stupid. ::cheesy grin::

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REVIEW! REVIEW REVIEW!

It is based on my thorough observations (and obsessive viewing habits) that the second chosen one, Faith, from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ was either, A. In love with Buffy Summers, B. Gay, or C. Both of the above. It is also through my observations that I wish to conclude Buffy Summers is, A. in love with Faith, B. Gay, C. Both of the above or D. asexual. The major symbol that I will use apart from sighting actual events will be the leather pants of gayness. 

In a season three episode, The Wish, of BtVS, a demon Anyanaka grants the wish of a scorned Cordelia Chase, transforming Sunnydale into a town without the Slayer. Because of this wish, Xander and Willow are vampires and work at the right hand of the Master. Willow's doppelganger dresses in all leather. When this wish is revoked (by my man Giles of all the bloody people in the world), all returns to normal in Sunnydale. Later, (Doppelgangland) a now mortal Anya does a spell that goes awry, resulting in the return of Willow's doppelganger. The known facts of vampires include the fact that the vampire self of a person is their true self. After caging the doppelganger, Willow informs Buffy that she thinks she's, "kind of gay." (But the whole being attracted to herself may have not only revealed the hampered homosexuality but a deep need for some psychoanalytic therapy for our little red-haired friend). This is the first appearance of the leather pants of gayness on Willow, but certainly not the last. As it turns out, Willow is _indeed_ gay (but not so much with the self-love) and when she meets her girlfriend Tara (from 2000-2002), the pants make a return in season five. Now that I have established a standing reputation for leather pants on BtVS, I will move on to Faith.

Returning to season three, we find that Faith's first appearance also occurs. On October 13, 1998, Faith makes her first appearance on _Buffy_, showing up at the Bronze in what else? Leather pants. These do not necessarily mean gayness however, but as time goes on, it may seem they do. Faith informs them on the same night that they meet slaying only makes you one thing, "hungry and horny." Faith displays the second often while on patrols with Buffy. She asks Buffy detailed questions about her ventures with Xander (testing her orientation perhaps?) and is often very physical with the Slayer. She asks her if she's ever had the urge to get in a little, "after hours _ugh_?" The grunt seems to disturb Buffy, but can we be so sure? After this same conversation, the two go out for some very physical dancing with each other at the Bronze. At this point after Faith's arrival, Buffy has adopted the same fashion sense as the darker Slayer and is big with the leather. 

Going back further in the girls' history we find Buffy's visit to Faith's hotel after Gwendolyn Post and her attempt at world domination. A rather touching conversation ensues in which Faith rebuffs Buffy's overtures but seems to have a second thought. "Buffy!" Faith calls right before Buffy leaves. "Yeah?" "Never mind." And Buffy leaves, though makes a face as if it's quite against her will that she does so. Further in the future we find the day that Faith held Buffy hostage after she had supposedly turned Angel. Angel and Buffy reveal that they've played Faith. Buffy and Faith fight to the draw until Faith finds her edge and knocks Buffy to the ground. Before abandoning her there and taking off into the night, she kisses Buffy. 

Faith is eventually left comatose at the end of season three but returns in season four with a nifty gadget, (and more leather), given to her by her boss, the mayor, who died on Buffy's graduation in a fiery explosion in the high school library. Faith, planning on using this gadget despite the fact she doesn't know what in God's name it does, shows up at Casa Summers and holds Joyce hostage until Buffy comes to save her. With Joyce, Faith vents about the fact that Buffy thinks she can just go off and leave them when they were the ones who cared, they were the ones who gave her everything she has. "Face it Joyce, she was over us a long time ago," Faith muses. Buffy then shows and Faith gets the chance to use her gizmo. The tool switches the girls' bodies and Faith is now in Buffy. Buffy in Faith is taken away by the cops and FiB is now able to do anything she wants with the blonde slayer's body. So, what is the first thing she chooses to do? Well, seeing the chance to release some of this pent-up rage and lust, FiB chooses to take a bath. (I'll leave the rest of that to your imagination but **HINT** it definitely rhymes with 'fasturbation') After the bath, FiB makes her way to the Bronze where she delights in her _new_ leather clothes and dances extraordinarily close with another female Bronze goer. 

There is also a connection that seems to go deeper between these two, a mental connection. Prior to Faith's awakening from her coma, she has a dream in which she remembers the heartbreak she felt when Buffy stabbed her. The dream begins with her in Buffy's room, the both of them helping to make the bed. They share several tender moments before Faith asks Buffy if she ever plans on removing the knife in her gut. Faith awakens soon after. In the season four finale, Restless, Buffy's dream consists of something very similar. She is standing in the doorway to her room, looking at her bed. Tara appears and Buffy tells her, "Faith and I just made that bed." Now, if I'm not mistaken, the two cannot dream the same thing, ("Wrong. Different brains, remember?" [Willow's response to Tara when she implies that maybe they had the same dream, in season six]) and it seems highly impractical that Faith would dream about making the bed and then Buffy would turn around and, 3 months later (TV time), dream that Faith and she had just made it if there weren't some connection between the two that cannot be explained by the fact they are "just friends."

I now rest my argument about Faith being in love with Buffy, gay, or both. When it comes to Buffy, some of the same points apply namely the mental connection between the two and her pained expression when Faith turned her away at the end of Revelations. The only way to prove Buffy is gay is through the indirect method. First, we must conclude that Buffy _doesn't_ (or can't) like men.

Traveling back to the first man Buffy slept with, we find Angel (season two). Angel was the vampire with the soul that would lose it and go all insane again (meaning mass slaughter of the innocent) if he ever got his true moment of happiness (and it ain't creme brulee). Angel didn't feel this was important enough to tell Buffy so the first man she sleeps with happens to turn insane and try to decimate all of Buffy's friends right after. If that's not trauma enough to turn her off of men, I don't know what is. But, it must be that Slayer-willpower that keeps her up. This girl takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' (No dirty jokes or puns implied). Anyway, she eventually gets Angel back to his normal solemn and broody self but he leaves her after one season, (most of which he spent trapped in a hell dimension because it's _that_ kind of show) to get his own show on the WB which is hardly as entertaining (except when he's dancing because Angel + Dancing = Hilarity). Buffy's rebound guy is a man named Parker Abrams (not Stevenson). This guy hooks up with her for a one night stand before moving on. This leaves Buffy highly disappointed and seriously hurting (not to mention whiney). She goes out for beer one night, (_eeevil_ beer [again, _that_ kind of show]). Under a prehistoric influence, she takes the opportunity to beat Parker about the head with a large stick. _There's _trauma for you. 

The rebound for the rebound turns out to be a ho-hum soldier boy from Iowa. After a few weeks with _this_ guy, you forget all about putting off that math homework. Hell, I'd take an _audit_ over watching this guy converse. But anyway, Riley makes it clear after one season (four) and one real-time summer break that he knows Buffy doesn't love him. (How could _anyone_ apart from his mother?) Riley eventually gets the hint that no one likes him and he skidaddles (and people all over the globe rejoice). Buffy tries to begin her new tradition, "birthdays without boyfriends," but finds herself preaching to the choir (Willow and Tara) but it is unclear at this point whether she means without boyfriends in the Willow/Tara way. We'll never know of course because Dawn chose this moment to make her speech and let us all know that she's gravely unhappy now that she knows she's a glowing ball of energy. No one really _minds_ however because we all know this was Dawn's best scene ever and we got the feeling Buffy was just gonna whine anyway. (For God's sake, it's not like you're the _only one_ who lives on the Hellmouth!)

Soon, Buffy is too busy being dead to have any type of boyfriend, but when she is brought back, a relationship with Spike develops. Buffy makes it clear to him that, "this isn't real, but I just want to feel," and it is apparent she doesn't love him through both actions and words. Then, to add insult to injury, Spike tries to rape her on account of her not loving him ('cause it looked such a great idea on paper, but when he actually tried to implement it, woo-boy, did _that_ ever blow up in his face!). This also adds to the list of traumatic events to make her hate men. 

Way back before Buffy's death, another character was killed: Joyce, Buffster's mom. It is a known fact in psychology that one of the ways a human deals with death, the absence of love, is to want to have sex with someone, a physical presence of "love." After the death of Joyce, Buffy goes to Tara. This is mostly because of the fact that Tara also lost her mother at a young age, but Buffy may have been going to her with a sneaky subtext that never actually got to play its way out. When Buffy starts to feel remorse for using Spike, (you don't use someone if you love them…), she finds herself in Tara's arms, (well, literally, her lap, but when you think about it, that's worse). Buffy was also in pain when she was not allowed to reenroll in U.C. Sunnydale. In order to pass the time until she could apply again, she began to attend classes with none other than Tara. After Willow's temporary break-up with Ms. Maclay, did anyone else happen to notice the increased multitude of scenes between Buffy and Tara? They seemed to multiply to a very high number once Willow was out of the picture. 

Now, why wouldn't Buffy go to Willow if she were looking for a relationship of that type? They _have_ been friends for much longer. It was clear to everyone with eyes that Willow was getting too heavy into the magicks, Buffy was most likely thinking she didn't need that stress on top of all the stress she was getting from having to readjust to living. On top of that, Buffy wasn't too keen on being brought back from the dead in the first place, and who was the mastermind behind that? Willow. But wait, you say, Buffy seemed freaked out when she found out about her and Tara. If she were gay, why would she put up that kind of a fight? Mighty good question, here's why: Buffy's initial reaction seemed to be, "Um…::vomit::," but couldn't that have been just a surprise face? If your best friend comes out to you after you've known them for 4 years and seen them through rocky relationships with men, (assuming your friend is female), you're _bound_ to have some type of mental relapse whether you're gay or not. Also, here's Buffy thinking _she's_ the one who's been repressing this secret for x number of years when who should she find's been doing the same thing? Willow. If she says anything now it's like she's in it for the trendyness. Willow. (Sorry, just seemed like great deal of my sentences are just simply, "Willow," and I though it would be neat if I did it again.) 

Anyway, around the end of season five, in fact, in the very last episode of season five entitled The Gift, (more casually referred to as TOW Buffy Buys the Farm), the opening teaser shows the Buffster, still alive and kicking at this point, fighting off some vamps in her leather pants of gayness. Are you saying she's in love with Glory? Um… well, that would be her prerogative and she very well may be but that's not the point I'm making. Faith introduced her to the leather to begin with. Faith had a style of slaying that was very unbridled, some may even go as far as to say it was _queer_, (heh heh), or _spasmodic_ (vocabulary word!). It was like that whether she was fighting off Buffy, a vamp, and even when she was sleeping with Xander. The point being, she usually one, ('cept when she fought Buffy but that was because the good guys always win [but not in The Gift]). Buffy, wishing to use this brilliant fighting plan against Glory the Hell-God, whips out the leather pants of gayness to inspire her in a Faithy way to kick Glory's ass back to wherever dimension she was actually from. We all know how well _that_ worked though when she ended up dismembered on the pavement, and my man _Giles_ was the fellow who actually destroyed Ms. Hell-God (or Mr. Hell-God), but he didn't need leather pants to do it.

And so, it is with great pleasure that I wrap up my argument at this point. I hope that, though you may not agree with me, (and chances are you don't), you've at least learned something new about my ability to become obsessed with things. Or maybe, possibly, you learned a piece of something you hadn't noticed before or you feel compelled to pat me on the back and say, "Maybe _you_ need psychoanalytic therapy, Kelly" but whatever you are feeling, I hope I at least kept you entertained. I mean, come on, my use of the word "fasturbation" alone should win me _some_ kind of praise.


End file.
